American human rights activist Angela Clemons, who is trying her best to achieve a fair trial in the high-profile case of Schaeffer Cox, admitted the existence of torture in American prisons, spoke about the fabrication of court sentences and slave labor in US penitentiaries.
Angela Clemons – a resident of Arkansas, USA, a civil human rights activist, founder of the non-profit organization Schaeffer’s Angels, seeking a review of the high-profile case of Schaeffer Cox, convicted on falsified charges of conspiracy to murder.
Mira Terada: Hello there, Angela. First of all, I would like to thank you for being able to devote your time to the Russian foundation to battle injustice. Would you please tell our viewers about your duty and about your fight against violations by the American judicial system?
Angela Clemons: I’m Angela Clemons, and I have a very dear friend who is in prison and I’ve tried to help him and every way I can to get free.
М.Т.: A lot of people calling you the right-hand person of Schaeffer Cox, an Alaskan resident who was convicted on trumped up charges. Could you be more specific about whether you knew Schaeffer before his arrest and what do you think about his chances of parole?
А.К.: I did not know him before, and I think his chances are pretty good. He was originally sentenced to 27 years, but they did drop a charge and it got knocked down to 13 years, and he’s working on some other angles to hopefully get out before then. So it’s just it’s so hard to know or guess what they’ll do, right?
М.Т.: I feel you. Schaeffer was convicted on extremely controversial charges conspiracy to murder, according to many human rights organizations, including ours, this accusation is the most common against those whom the American authorities want to remove from the public field or eliminate as a politician as soon as possible. On many occasions for this kind of accusations, the fact of committing an act is not even necessary. What do you think about this?
А.К.: Well, I don’t know if you know, but his charge conspiracy to have a conspiracy. You’re supposed to have two people, somebody that you. But in Schaeffer’s case, he was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder with no identifiable target.
М.Т.: That’s bizarre.
А.К.: It was precedented in that case, he was convicted of soliciting no one to kill no one. So it’s definitely a precedent case that they bent the rules on.
М.Т.: During court appearances the prosecutor refused to take into account the facts that proved Schaeffer’s innocence. The federal judge, who was summoned specifically for this case after his retirement, refused to take into account the records, confirming his innocence. Why do you think the government was so scared that it took such measures and turned the court into a kangaroo court?
А.К.: Well, Schaeffer had, he’s a real dynamic speaker, and a lot of people listen to him and he has a really good grasp on freedom. He was home schooled, so he wasn’t, you know, brainwashed in 12 years of public education.
His ideas of freedom and following the Constitution were very important. And those are the kind of things that the government sees as threats.
М.Т.: The judicial procedures in the high profile case of Schaeffer removed from Alaska to Washington, despite the fact that the crimes accused of him took place on the territory of Alaska. In your opinion, did the prosecutors deliberately took this step taken into account the popularity of Cox in Alaska at that moment?
А.К.: Absolutely. And I’m not sure if you know, but his case was a state case, the state of Alaska, and the state threw the case out because they heard the evidence and they decided there is no case.
М.Т.: So and federal government picked it up.
А.К.: Right, they picked it up and it’s completely out of their jurisdiction. They had no reason and no political authority to do it, but they just did.
М.Т.: Schaeffer was sentenced to twenty six years in prison and is currently serving his sentence in the communications management unit CMU in Indiana, a prison originally created for especially dangerous terrorists and recognized as one of the 10 worst prisons in the world. The American Civil Liberties Union has repeatedly expressed concern about possible racial discrimination against white prisoners, especially Christians, since most of the prison prisoners are Arab Muslims. Tell me, did did the Schaeffer encounter harassment and bullying inside the penitentiary institution and how did the prison guards react to this?
А.К.: Yes.
CMU that’s a basically a torture unit. They have tortures. One thing is they were starving them to death.
They feed them super small calories. So he actually had the disease of scurvy, which is a vitamin C deficiency. And a lot of the men have beriberi, which is a vitamin K deficiency. They expose them to extreme sleep deprivation, where they’ll wake them up 30 minutes. They’ve been exposed to extreme temperature deviations, where they’ll make it really cold or really really hot. I know that they are not supposed to four point shackle them to a bed for longer than twenty four hours. But I know that that’s not always true, that they’ll four point shackle them for weeks, weeks at a time. So definitely the Muslims in this unit hate the white guys, and I don’t know if you’ll get to if you get to this. A
November of 2018, I think there was a prisoner that was beheaded there in this unit.
nd when when the prisoner had a wire to try to take this guy’s head off the guardians locked themselves in a room. And so the prisoners are just there to fight for themselves, and there’s four or five Christian men that are fighting the, you know, 30 Muslims. So it’s a it’s a very, very bad place.
М.Т.: It really sounds like a clear torture..
А.К.: It is definitely.
М.Т.: One of Schaeffer’s few friends in prison who was brutally executed by a racial Islamist prisoner, the prison guards in turn took absolutely no actions to stop him. That’s exactly what we’ve been discussing now. How is this possible in a high security prison was the budget of several million dollars annually and wasn’t this murder organized by the American Special Services in order to break the Shaffer’s model?
А.К.: Well, that’s a good question on how it was allowed in this high security prison. But I do know that the prisoner that was murdered had a at a court case against the warden and the prison. So it’s just kind of interesting that he was the one that was killed. They are always trying to break these guys down. They limit their phone calls to two 15 minute calls a week. They’re monitored live, and if they say anything, they don’t want them to say they’ll hang up the phone. It’s monitored by the counterterrorism unit in Virginia..
М.Т.: Well, in August 2017, the Court of Appeal ruled that there was no evidence confirming Schaeffer’s involvement in incitement to murder and reduce his prison sentence by 10 years. What do you think are the chances that the court will take into account other evidence of his innocence and release an innocent convicted person?
А.К.: Well, the last appeal? So you’re referring to the appeal that dropped his charge of solicitation? And if you don’t solicit anyone, then there’s nobody to conspire with but the charge of conspiracy. Look, so this last appeal, the judges on the Ninth Circuit said that if they drop his charge, then that’s going to open up a lot more cases to come to them, and they’re basically saying we can’t be bothered with all these cases. So they denied his last appeal to drop conspiracy.
М.Т.: As we know for some time, Schaeffer Cox served a prison sentence together with the Russian man Viktor Bout, who was also convicted on trumped up charges. How did their relationship develop? Did Victor’s experience help to maintain peaceful relations with the prisoners from Muslim countries due to the fact that for a long time he was working and living in the eastern countries?
А.К.: I know.
Schaeffer Cox and Viktor Bout have been really good friends.
One of the ways the prison tries to break these men is separate friends. So they’ve been separated for a while, but I know that they were very supportive to each other.
М.Т.: So did Viktor Bout help him to maintain an establish relationship with the Muslim people since he had such an experience working and communicating with people from Arab countries? You think Victor’s experience helped?
А.К.: Yes, yes, yes.
М.Т.: In a recent interview with the Foundation to Battle Injustice, conservative activist Rudy Davis, who is also supporting Cox, complained that censorship in the United States goes beyond what’s permitted. The American government suppresses the freedom of speech of everyone who somehow express an irritation with the current establishment. Tell me, please, have you faced censorship in your struggle for truth and justice? And if so, how did it affect the campaign to protect Schaeffer?
А.К.: Well, they’re definitely censoring us, like when I was sitting right next to Victor Booth’s daughter. She has her computer and I had mine, and she brought up an article on her computer, and I tried to bring up the exact same article and it would not come up on my computer. So it was just an example of how we only can see what they want us to see. And many, many, many voices of truth have been completely deleted from Facebook and social media. So it hasn’t been a big problem for me personally, I’m not real outspoken on social media, so.
М.Т.: It’s no secret that Schaeffer is a Christian, a man of religious views. American and European leftists have seriously set out to destroy Christianity. It seems that they receive support from influential political groups in the United States, Canada, Europe. Arson of churches has become more frequent. Christians are attacked by atheist fanatics. I think that this is truly terrible. How do you think we can stop this process?
А.К.: Well, I don’t know how we can stop it, but so much the the prosecutor at the federal trial and his closing arguments. He actually said in court that Mr. Cox believes God’s law is above man’s law and is therefore beyond rehabilitation and deserves a longer prison sentence. He actually said it in court. So I think the the best thing is to just keep speaking and keep being ourselves, and whatever happens happens.говорить и оставаться самими собой, и что будет, то будет.
М.Т.: I agree with you. We should keep speaking. Everyone sees how conservatives are unfairly treated in the United States. There is no doubt that the political repression and the propaganda machine is targeted against conservatives. For what reason has there not yet been created nationwide movement to protect the rights of conservative minded citizens by analogy with the organization Black Lives Matter, which protects the rights of African-Americans?
А.К.: Well, I think that the media is so owned by the people with money, and it’s they only report what they’re paid to report. So I think that there’s not enough people probably standing up and not complying because it takes a lot of people to not comply and it takes a lot of people to really care about what’s going on. I’ve told hundreds of people about the CMU, and no one really knows what to do or how to stop it. And you know, the prisoners are one of the most hated groups in America, so it’s really sad.
М.Т.: It is. At the moment there are about two and a half million prisoners in American prisons. America occupies a leading position in the number of prisoners per 100 000 inhabitants. About 25 % of all prisoners on the planet are behind bars in American prisons, although the United States population is only about five percent of the world’s population. Why do you think there are so many prisoners in the United States, and does the United States penitentiary system need urgent reform? Why don’t any world media cover up the issues related to the US penal system?
А.К.:
Well, I think that there are so many prisoners because there’s so much corruption and they want to fill their prison beds because some prisons get 65 000 a year per prisoner. So it’s definitely a slave labor.
And in 1984, the prison population of America was 285 000. So they I think that the CIA, they created the war on drugs, and they use that as an opportunity to build prisons and fill their prison beds. And now it’s a multibillion dollar industry, and it’s it is so sad, so sad, people lose their whole lives for it.
М.Т.: According to our estimates, there are about one thousand so-called human rights organizations in the United States. Tell us about how they work. Do organizations that call themselves human rights defenders really help people who faced police, judicial or any other brutality?
А.К.: Well, the only one I’ve seen actually do anything regarding the CMU is the Center for Constitutional Rights. They have some lawsuits and they’ve written some articles about it. But other than that, there just seems like there’s just not enough people to really care.
We’re so in America, we’re so brainwashed to think that if someone’s in prison, they’re guilty and they deserve whatever they get.
Three fourths of the prisoners are not guilty of any crime.
So, we have, you know, three fourths of prisoners that shouldn’t even be in prison. But there just seems to be like there’s just not enough people who care. And they really believe in America, they really believe everything they hear from the media. I think it’s changing, but super slow, really slow.
М.Т.: The Foundation to Battle Injustice regularly requesting that clarifications from American officials trying to draw attention to cases of state terror, including the case of Shaeffer Cox. We can say with the confidence that American officials respond by unsubscribing without initiating any actions aimed at reviewing cases of obvious human rights violations. Does the American government really not care about its citizens? Is this a sign of the complete lack of interest of responsible officials in the problem of systematic infringement of rights and freedoms?
А.К.: Yeah, I think that the system overall does not care about their prisoners. They’re getting money for the prisoners, and they seem to not care at all about the innocent people in prison.
М.Т.: This is so sad.
А.К.: It’s very, very, very sad. And there’s a strong line of more like communism, you know, through the government, it’s no longer a constitutional republic, it’s, you know, they operate like communism and people are so afraid to stand up to authorities there. So you have the cops and the politicians and because they’ve destroyed so many lives. And I think people overall are really scared, really scared.
М.Т.: Do you agree with a statement that the American criminal justice system is set against people, exists only to make money? Is it possible that the American system has closed its eyes only so as not to see all the horror and arbitrariness that do prosecutors and judges in courtrooms?
А.К.: I do agree with that statement. Yes, I think it’s absolutely about money. And I think it’s absolutely they have no care as the people, as humans, they are bureaucracies, they are rule followers, and they do not see people as human beings..
М.Т.: The Declaration of Independence of the United States and the Basic Laws of many other countries guarantee the right of people to armed rebellion against tyrannical and unjust power. How literally should this right be taken and where is the limit that the government must cross so that the people can use this right? Has such a moment come yet in the United States?
А.К.: I think that that moment is way past. I think they submitted to whatever they hear on TV. They believe it. And, you know, I think the line is definitely crossed a long, long time ago. And you know, you see a few people here and there standing up and a few pockets of people that has more freedom. But overall, it’s people that follow rules and comply with ever the perceived authority says.